Definition
Allodarii (singular: allodarius) are holders of allodial land — that is, persons who own land absolutely, free from any feudal obligation, tenure, or service owed to a superior lord. The term describes the largest estate in land that a subject could possess: ownership without the encumbrance of homage, fealty, rent, or any other incident of feudal tenure. In practical terms, allodarii held their land as an inheritance by right of nature and reason rather than by grant from an overlord.
The concept stands in direct contrast to the condition of virtually all English landholders under the common law, who held their estates mediately or immediately of the Crown. Allodial ownership of this kind was far more characteristic of Continental European legal systems than of England, where the feudal theory that the Crown was the ultimate lord of all land was legally dominant.
Common Confusion
ALLODARII is frequently encountered alongside ALLODIUM and ALLODIAL in historical sources, and the three terms are sometimes used interchangeably. The distinction is formal but important: allodium is the thing — the form of landholding itself; allodial describes the quality of that holding; and allodarii are the persons who hold in that manner. Researchers tracing a chain of title argument or a historical treatise on tenure should be careful not to conflate the status of the holder with the character of the estate.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears almost exclusively in historical and comparative legal writing. Researchers will encounter allodarii primarily in three contexts: (1) treatises on feudal tenure explaining what English land law was not, using allodial ownership as the contrasting benchmark; (2) early American constitutional and property law debates, where some argued that the Revolution extinguished the Crown's ultimate lordship and converted American land to allodial tenure, making all American freeholders allodarii in effect; and (3) Continental legal history sources translated or summarized into English, where allodial ownership was the ordinary condition in many regions.
The term functions as a marker of theoretical limit in the English sources. When Coke and Bacon's Abridgement invoke allodarii, they are typically establishing the ceiling of what a subject could hold — not describing a class of actual English landholders. Researchers should read such passages in that framing rather than as evidence of a recognized class of English property owners.
The distinction also matters when reading 19th-century American property scholarship. Some courts and commentators argued strenuously that American fee simple absolute was, post-Revolution, genuinely allodial in character — a claim with real consequences for questions of escheat, eminent domain compensation theory, and the nature of the sovereign's interest in land. A researcher working on any of those threads needs to understand allodarii as the conceptual endpoint of that argument.
Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries — Black's (1st and 2nd editions) and Rapalje & Lawrence — give virtually identical definitions: owners of allodial lands; owners of estates as large as a subject may have. All three cite the same two authorities: Coke on Littleton (Co. Litt. 1) and Bacon's Abridgement under "Tenure." The uniformity across sources reflects that this was a settled, if narrow, term of art with a fixed reference.
The slight textual curiosity is that Black's 2nd edition renders the Bacon citation as "Jenure" rather than "Tenure" — almost certainly a typographical error in the original printing. Researchers citing the 2nd edition should treat this as a corrupted citation and understand the reference as Bacon's Abridgement, "Tenure," A, consistent with the other sources.
None of the historical dictionaries attempt to explain the political or theoretical significance of allodial tenure in the American context, nor do they address the post-Revolutionary debate. For that dimension, researchers must look beyond these standard reference works to treatises on American property law and early constitutional commentary.
Jurisdictional Note
In English law, true allodial ownership by a subject was largely theoretical; all land was held, in legal contemplation, of the Crown. In many American jurisdictions, the post-Revolutionary position is that fee simple absolute approximates allodial ownership, with the state substituted for the Crown only for limited purposes such as escheat. Some states have addressed this more explicitly than others.